The amended Law Enforcement Act (NetzDG for short) will enter into force on February 1, 2022. According to this, social networks are required to report criminal content to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) rather than simply delete it as before. Compared with the “Germany editorial networkBKA spokesperson (RND) said that the “Central Office for Reporting Criminal Content on the Internet” which has around 200 officers under the BKA umbrella will start work on time. According to current estimates, about 250,000 reports annually are expected to lead to about 150,000 new criminal cases with it. The goal of the reporting office is to “enable consistent prosecution of the authors of such criminal content by responsible law enforcement authorities in federal states.” Within the BKA, but also with cooperation partners from the police and justice jointly developed and tested in order to be as prepared as possible for the time from the completion date.
Without Google and Facebook
BKA currently assumes that Google and Facebook will not report any alleged criminal offenses at this time. Both companies consider it disproportionate to have to verify all contributions and filed a lawsuit in July 2021 – in an urgent procedure and in principle. Then the Federal Ministry of Justice decided in August not to insist on the reports from the two companies for the time being. Regardless of this, a BKA spokesperson said: “Other social networks with at least two million registered users will be subject to the legal reporting obligation under NetzDG as of February 1, 2022.”
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