On 23.01.2015, under the direction of RA Prof. Dr. Jochen Schneider, speakers included Christine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (former Federal Minister of Justice), Jimmy Schulz (member of the At-Large Advisory Committee of ICANN, Berlin) and Thomas Kranig (President of BayLDA, Ansbach) on current data protection issues. The safe harbour agreement is “on the brink” because the competent state authorities could at any time prohibit companies from exporting data to third countries, namely the USA.
RA Witte: “Individual state data protection authorities have already asked the Federal Government in summer 2014 to prove that the unlimited access of foreign intelligence services to personal data of people in Germany is effectively limited. Until then, according to the Conference of Federal and State Data Protection Commissioners in a letter dated July 24, 2014, no new authorizations for data export by companies will be granted, and the suspension of authorizations already granted by orders under Section 38 (5) BDSG will be reviewed. I am not aware of any such measures to date. I am in contact with all parties involved on behalf of my clients. The Federal Government as well as the European Commission will hopefully act in the interest of the citizens in this matter. At the latest with this, data protection has arrived on the “political parquet” – where it actually does not belong. Our data protection law should not become an international bargaining chip, but should remain the result of the will of the voters.
We will continue the discussion at the 2nd German-American Data Protection Day on 30 April 2015 in Munich”.