In the fight against violence against children, the Federal Government’s Commissioner for Child Abuse, Kerstin Claus, is pushing for an obligation to store IP addresses. “In cases of sexual abuse, rapid access to stored communication data can be crucial to identifying perpetrators and freeing children from acute danger situations,” Claus told the German Press Agency.
If Internet and mobile phone providers were legally obliged to store IP addresses for a limited period of time, such as 14 days, this could make an “important contribution to child protection,” she stressed. To date, there is no such obligation to store communication data in a uniform manner.
Claus is thus supporting the position of the Green Justice Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Benjamin Limbach, who announced a corresponding initiative in the Bundesrat in an interview with “Spiegel” earlier this week. “If our authorities find out that suspects are planning to commit a serious crime over the Internet, they should find out from the provider, with the consent of the responsible court, which people are hiding behind the IP addresses,” said Limbach. The aim is expressly to secure IP addresses and “not content, locations or movement profiles.”
“No massive data retention”
He said he hoped that the federal government would support the proposal and that the Bundestag would amend the Telecommunications Act accordingly. His party had also changed its negative stance in this regard. It would not be “massive data retention” but a “minimally invasive intervention,” Limbach stressed.
Claus explained that access to stored data could help stop criminals: endangered children could be freed from “acute abuse situations”. Especially when investigative authorities have evidence of new, previously unknown material, the computer used can be identified via IP addresses. IP addresses are often “the only key to helping children quickly and comprehensively”.
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is also in favor of this. In a paper from last year, the BKA explains that storing IP addresses for 14 days can significantly increase the success rate in identifying criminals. In a corresponding test in 2022, the identification rate rose from 41 percent to 80 percent. So far, the Federal Ministry of Justice has rejected the uniform storage of such data without cause. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), on the other hand, would support this. Most recently, there were also calls for a new regulation on data retention in connection with the alleged terrorist attack in Solingen.
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