Call for providers

Idee: Wir suchen einen ausländischen Anbieter, der trotz Vorratsdatenspeicherung anonyme Telekommunikation in Deutschland ermöglicht. Entwurf eines Aufrufs:

Call for providers of anonymous and retention-free telecommunications services

We are a German privacy group intending to protect Germans from the retention of their communications data for government purposes. The German parliament will shortly pass a bill requiring the retention of traffic data for fixed line, mobile and VoIP telephony as well as for e-mail and internet access services. However there is a legitimate interest in anonymous communications (e.g. with political activists, with medical and legal consultants or with journalists), so we would like to ensure the continued availability of such services in Germany.

To that end, we are looking for an international (preferably Canadian) partner that will provide anonymous and retention-free telecommunications services to German residents. Services we seek to be provided include:

• Prepaid telephony, e.g. by providing a callback service for outgoing calls and a forwarding/redirecting service for incoming calls. These services should be available to users of both fixed line and mobile phones. Alternatively, they could be offered to Internet users. It is required that the provider delete any traffic data immediately after a call.
• Prepaid broadband internet access. Satellite technology could be used. It is required that the provider delete any traffic data, including the caller ID and the dynamically assigned IP address, upon the end of a connection.
• E-Mail mailboxes for sending and receiving e-mails. It is required that the provider does not retain any log files, including the users' IP addresses. Secure connections (SSL) should be available. This service should be advertisement funded and provided for free.

We offer to contribute to the project by helping with translations. We will also advertise the services in Germany and sell prepaid cards in our offices free of charge.

We believe that providing the services outlined above is economically attractive to our partners. There is a sufficiently large market in Germany to make such services profitable. The services could be offered to other European or non-European countries as well. We would ask our fellow privacy NGOs abroad to promote them.

For more information or to make an offer, please contact the German Working Group on Data Retention (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung).