AfD leak: Interior ministry says domestic intelligence may use all findings
Whether the leaked AfD emails could feed into a ban procedure is unclear. The federal interior ministry points to the intelligence agency's powers, while the data protection authority reviews the late report.
Archive image · Photo: Manfred Brückels / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Following the AfD data leak, a spokesperson for the federal interior ministry said on Wednesday that the domestic intelligence agency may in principle use "all available findings" in such proceedings. ZDFheute reported the statement. It is not known whether the agency is already examining possibly unconstitutional statements in the emails, or whether the contents could affect its classification of the party.
The AfD says it has filed a criminal complaint over the attack and the publication. According to ZDFheute, Berlin prosecutors did not initially confirm receipt and said the complaint would be examined. The party says a hosting provider was attacked in September and that parts of a few mailboxes, most of them unused for years, were copied.
A data protection question also remains open: parties must report such incidents within 72 hours. According to t-online, the AfD reported the incident to Berlin's data protection commissioner on Tuesday at around 7 p.m. – at least two and a half weeks after the party learned of the problem; according to hacker Lilith Wittmann, the hack was noticed as early as 9 September. The AfD says it informed the data protection officer "immediately". The data protection authority is reviewing whether the deadline was met.