Detlef Schmuck: “It is unacceptable for the German state to conduct a census using a US cloud.”
Hamburg, 11 August 2022 – Data security expert Detlef Schmuck warns of the risks of participating in the “Census 2022”. The reason: the German authorities are working with the US cloud provider Cloudflare on the nationwide data collection. As a result, there is a risk that the information obtained with the Census 2022 can be partially analysed by US authorities.
Detlef Schmuck explains: “It is completely absurd that a federal German authority is asking the population to disclose personal data to a US provider during the Census 2022 under the threat of coercive money. Anyone who types in www.zensus2022.de is first connected to a German server hosted by the US provider Cloudflare. Even the SSL security certificate is issued to the US company. Only after logging in there are you redirected to the secure server of the German authority. This is absurd, because the US company thereby receives both personal and personally identifiable data, which it has to pass on to US authorities upon request according to US legislation.”
According to data security expert Detlef Schmuck, the use of a US cloud service for the 2022 census, of all things, represents the lack of understanding of many German authorities for data protection legislation. “Giving the absence of an alternative as a reason for unlawful behaviour is unacceptable,” says Detlef Schmuck. He points out that with appropriate planning, there must always be a DSGVO-compliant solution in Europe. German data services, including the TeamDrive service from Schmuck’s own company TeamDrive Systems GmbH, offer data protection-compliant cloud services as an alternative to US providers.
“With a US cloud provider, the entire data collection of the 2022 Census is legally vulnerable,” Detlef Schmuck predicts legal difficulties, adding with resignation: “The data flowing off to the US cannot be controlled and is inaccessible to our judiciary.”
