Telekom remains obliged to provide law enforcement and security authorities with information on owners of an internet connection with "dynamic" IP addresses. An emergency application filed in September 2008 with the Cologne Administrative Court (VG Köln) with the aim of suspending this obligation for the time being was rejected by the court in an order announced to the parties on 18 December 2008.
The background to the legal dispute are orders issued by the Federal Network Agency on 5 August and 12 September 2008, which obliged Telekom, on the basis of the Telecommunications Act (TKG), to inform law enforcement and security authorities (public prosecutors, constitutional protection authorities, the Federal Intelligence Service and the Military Counter-Intelligence Service), upon request, which subscriber was assigned a specific dynamic IP address at a specific time. Normally, IP addresses are assigned "dynamically", i.e. each time an internet connection is established, and are not permanently assigned (as a "static" IP address) to a specific connection. If the address and the time of its use are known, the respective provider can uniquely identify the connection owner according to the traffic data they have.
Telekom had lodged an objection with the Federal Network Agency against the aforementioned orders because it is of the opinion that the obligation to provide information leads to a violation of the secrecy of telecommunications, which may only be interfered with on the basis of a judicial order in individual cases. At the same time, she filed an application with the Cologne Administrative Court (VG Köln), with which she wanted to achieve that she would not have to provide any information for the time being during the duration of the opposition proceedings and a subsequent judicial clarification of this dispute.
The court did not grant this application. In its reasoning, it stated that the legal questions raised were open and could not be conclusively clarified in summary proceedings. Until a final clarification, however, the public interest in the provision of information outweighs the legal interest because, in view of the increasing importance of communication via the internet, effective criminal prosecution and effective defence against threats to public safety and order would otherwise be made considerably more difficult.
An appeal against the decision can be filed with the Higher Administrative Court in Münster (OVG Münster) within two weeks. The full text of the decision will soon be published in the public database www.nrwe.de (Ref.: 21 L 1398/08).
Source: Press release of the VG Cologne of 18 December 2008
Goldberg Attorneys at Law
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
E-mail: m.ullrich@goldberg.de
