1. a) § 111 TKG imposes a duty on commercial providers of telecommunications
services to collect and store the telephone numbers, line identification numbers, mobile end device numbers and identifiers of email accounts (hereinafter collectively referred to as telecommunications numbers) which they allocate or provide and the related personal data of the subscribers such as names, addresses and dates of birth,
also including the data of the commencement of contract; with regard to the email account identifiers, no independent duty of collection is imposed, but merely a duty of
storage if it happens that these data are collected in any case. The provision is intended to provide a data basis for the information procedures governed by §§ 112
and 113 TKG.
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b) § 112 TKG creates an automated procedure to give information from the data
stored under § 111 TKG. According to this, providers of telecommunications services
for the public must supply the data covered by § 111 TKG, in compliance with a statutory instrument which deals with the technical details (see § 112.3 TKG) in such a
way that they can be retrieved by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur)
without the knowledge of the providers (§ 112.1 TKG). In this connection, the possibility must be guaranteed of data retrieval using incomplete search data or a search
with a similarity function. At the request of authorities described in more detail, the
Federal Network Agency is to retrieve these data sets in the automated procedure
and to transmit them to those authorities (see § 112.4 TKG). The authorities entitled
include in particular the criminal prosecution authorities, the federal and Land (state)
law enforcement authorities for purposes of warding off danger, the Central Office of
the German Customs Investigation Service (Zollkriminalamt), the federal and Land
authorities for the protection of the Constitution, the Military Counterintelligence Service (Militärischer Abschirmdienst) and the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst), public safety answering points, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) and customs
administration authorities for the purpose of combating undeclared work (see § 112.2
TKG). The information is supplied at all times insofar as it is necessary to discharge
the statutory duties and the requests to the Federal Network Agency are made under
the automated procedure (see end of § 112.2 TKG). The requesting authorities are
responsible for the permissibility of the transmission; the Federal Network Agency only reviews these if there is a particular occasion (see § 112.4 sentence 2 and 112.3
TKG).
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The statutory instrument provided for in § 112.3 sentence 1 TKG and the Technical
Regulations (Technische Richtlinie) under § 112.3 sentence 3 TKG based on this
have not yet been issued. However, under the transitional provision of § 150.12 sentence 3 TKG, the technical regulations are replaced by the interface description on
the basis of § 90.2 and 90.6 of the Telecommunications Act of 25 July 1996
(Telekommunikationsgesetz 1996 – TKG 1996, Federal Law Gazette I p. 1120) as
long as the Technical Regulations have not been issued. According to information
from the Federal Network Agency, at present the supply of information on data in the
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