On Friday 12 March the German Parliament (Bundestag) will discuss the proposal for a new Telecommunication Law in second and third reading. The government coalition (made up of Social Democrats and Greens) has softened many of the proposed new telecommunication surveillance powers.

There won't be mandatory general data retention and the costs of handing-over data about customers will be reimbursed on a case-by-case basis. Also, the idea - introduced in the draft of 15 October 2003 - to introduce mandatory identification for pre-paid phone-cards is gone. (See an earlier report in EDRI-gram 21)

Originally the Bundesrat, the council of the federal states, demanded that service providers should store all data about all the telecom activities of their users for a period of 6 months, including for example information about telephone calls, SMS and internet traffic. Both privacy authorities and the industry protested against these wishes and objections were raised in parliament.

According to the Social Democrat telecom spokesperson Hubertus Heil, there will be an appropriate reimbursement for any demand of customer data, not for the investments in surveillance equipment and infrastructure. Heil refers to this as 'the Austrian model', in spite of the fact that providers in that country are in fact reimbursed for infrastructure since 2004, after the Constitutional Court declared the cost-shift from government to industry unconstitutional.

If parliament accepts the law, the Bundesrat still has to accept. This is not likely to happen, since it is dominated by Christian Democrats. In that case a conciliatory procedure will be necessary to create a compromise.

Rot-Grün entschärft Überwachungsklauseln im TK-Gesetz (09.03.2004)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/45342

Overview of the legislative process (in German)
http://www.tkrecht.de/index.php4?direktmodus=novelle-genese

Report by Andreas Neumann in EDRI-gram nr. 21 (05.11.2203)
http://www.edri.org/cgi-bin/index?funktion=view&id=000100000117