By Ansgar Lange
Internet blocking under the Inter-State Treaty on Gambling (GlüStV): Data privacy activist Thilo Weichert fears that data retention may sneak in through the back door
Kiel, November 2014. It is on the attack again – the state-fed data behemoth, whose crafty limbs have found a new way of outwitting data privacy activists: The current focus of the state surveillance fetishists is the alleged combat of supposedly illegal gaming. On the basis of the GlüStV adopted by the Federal States, the German supervisory authorities – above all the Ministry of the Interior of Lower Saxony, the Federal Financial Supervisory Agency BaFin and the Federal Ministry of Finance – intend to cut off payments to online gaming providers who, in their opinion, are illegal. In order to implement this so-called Financial Blocking, banks and payment service providers are obligated to monitor all payments and to code transactions associated with gaming providers accordingly. However, the practical problems and the problems relating to (data protection) law in the context of the planned measures are manifold, which is, inter alia, the result of an analysis by the Independent State Center for Data Protection in Schleswig-Holstein (ULD). … Continue Reading
