Traffic data

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This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

In telecommunications, traffic data (also connection data or traffic edge data ) is the technical information that is collected, stored, processed, transmitted or used by the respective telecommunication company ( provider ) when using a telecommunication service ( telephony , internet use ) . The traffic data are a sub-category of the so-called marginal data that arise when using any electronic infrastructure.

A legal definition can be found in Section 3 No. 30 of the German Telecommunications Act (TKG).

Traffic data includes

  • the telecommunications service used
  • the number or ID of the lines involved (caller and called party)
  • personal authorization IDs
  • the card number (when using customer cards)
  • possible location data (for cell phones )
  • Start and end of the respective connection (date and time)
  • the amount of data transmitted

The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime of November 23, 2001 (Cybercrime Convention, ETS No.185) also defines traffic data. This definition differs from the German regulation in the Telecommunications Act. Location data, for example, do not count as traffic data under the Cybercrime Convention.

The telecommunications companies are allowed to save traffic data for billing purposes. The collection and use of traffic data is also permitted in the event of malfunctions in telecommunications systems and the misuse of telecommunications services. See Section 100 of the Telecommunications Act.

The traffic data does not include the content of the telecommunication process, e.g. B. the content of phone calls . The telecommunications company is generally not allowed to record and save this content data.

Analysis options

Traffic data allow conclusions to be drawn about individual use of the Internet , conversation partners on the phone, and - as with e-mails and SMS text messages , where technical data and content cannot be separated - also information about the content of communication. The traffic data makes it possible, for example, to assign anonymous statements on the Internet or anonymous participants in file sharing networks to a telephone connection. Police and law enforcement authorities , intelligence services and also private third parties, especially the music industry , are therefore interested in evaluating this data for their own purposes. The police have had access to connection data since 1928. The then § 12 Telecommunication Systems Act was replaced in 2002 by § 100g of the Code of Criminal Procedure . The Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law has empirically examined police practice in recent years.

Far-reaching analyzes can be carried out using the traffic data. Writes Edward Felten to a New York court:

Below, I discuss how advances in technology and the proliferation of metadata-producing devices, such as phones, have produced rich metadata trails. Many details of our lives can be gleaned by examining those trails, which often yield information more easily than do the actual content of our communications. Superimposing our metadata trails onto the trails of everyone within our social group and those of everyone within our contacts' social groups, paints a picture that can be startlingly detailed.

in German:

Below, I'll discuss how advances in technology and the rise in metadata-producing devices like smartphones have resulted in rich metadata trails. Many details of our life can be found out by analyzing these traces, which often lead to such information more easily than the actual content of our communication. The joint analysis of our metadata traces with traces of every person within our social group and every social group of our contacts paints a startlingly detailed picture.

A concrete, real example of the analysis of connection data of a single person - i.e. without the context of the connection data of the social environment - is provided by Malte Spitz's data set .

Legal situation in Germany

By means of a court order, the police can only demand the surrender of traffic data that the telephone companies already have for technical reasons or for billing purposes. Since the beginning of 2008, however, telecommunications providers have been obliged to store traffic data and other data for six months for these purposes. This so-called data retention was declared unconstitutional on March 2, 2010 by the Federal Constitutional Court in a fundamental decision. Therefore, the regulation described in the first sentence is currently valid again.

Traffic data are considered personal data . They are subject to data protection .

Traffic data is collected to different extents:

  • The EVN (proof of individual connection) is created by telecommunications companies and - if required - passed on to customers as proof of the billed connections.
  • Within the telecommunications company, traffic data are collected as CDR (Call Detail Records). They serve as evidence of the connections in the telecommunications network and as evidence of performance for telecommunications service providers. CDR contain a lot of technical information and are not intended to be passed on to customers.

Austria

With an amendment to the law in 2007, the authorization for call data retrieval was included in Section 53 of the Security Police Act . The processing of traffic data for information purposes is then also permitted for security police purposes.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Cybercrime Convention of the Council of Europe
  2. ^ Last call before the murder, taz of March 5, 2008
  3. ^ Edward W. Felten : United States District Court Southern District Of New York: Case No. 13-cv-03994 (WHP). (PDF; 812 kB) August 23, 2013, accessed on August 29, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Telltale Cell Phone. Retrieved August 29, 2013 .

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