About me / contact

Digital freedom fighter and former Member of the European Parliament (2019 – 2024). In the European Parliament I was a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and a substitute member of the Committee on Legal Affairs.

The European Pirates are members of the Greens/European Free Alliance group. I was co-coordinating my group’s Digital Working Group. In the European Parliament I have been involved in negotiating the following digital legislation: Terrorist Content Online (TERREG), Digital Services Act, ePrivacy Regulation, European Digital Identity, transparency and targeting of political advertising, European Health Data Space (EHDS), Rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse (“chat control”). The VoteWatch Influence Index ranke me as socially most influencial Member of the European Parliament working on digital policy.

In court I am currently challenging the secrecy of EU surveillance research “iBorderCtrl”, the German law on data retention, the indiscriminate retention of internet access logs and indiscriminate chat control.

From 6 May 2012 to 6 June 2017, I was a member of the Schleswig-Holstein State Parliament for the Pirate Party, and temporarily chaired the parliamentary group.

I am an active member of the NGO Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (Working Group on Data Retention), author of the blog ‘Daten-Speicherung.de – minimum data, maximum privacy’ and I live in Kiel.

European Parliament profile

Curriculum vitae

Wikipedia article (in German)

My motivation

Fighting for more freedom and self-determination for all people is the main goal of my political work. My dream is a society that keeps us safe by strengthening the respect for each other’s rights. A world without mass surveillance, in which we live more safely than we do today, is possible.

We need to reduce state surveillance of citizens, independently evaluate existing surveillance laws, eliminate new surveillance plans, invest in targeted crime prevention and focus on people’s real problems in everyday life rather than on fear-mongering.

Why Pirate?

When I learned in 2006 that the German Pirate Party was to be founded in Berlin, I became a founding member especially because of the Party’s strong commitment to privacy and data protection. The Pirate Party declared war right in its first policy programme on excessive state surveillance. It recognised that government surveillance of citizens who are not suspected of any crime is a fundamentally unacceptable violation of the fundamental right to privacy. It is high time that the changes sought by the civil liberties movement, for example at the protest marches “Freedom not Fear”, are finally implemented politically.

My political work

Involvement in the civil liberties movement, in this context discussions with and contacts to members of parliament, ministries, EU Commission, data protection commissioners, etc.
Digital rights litigation: Participated in the organization, development and implementation of the successful collective constitutional complaint against data retention, the successful constitutional complaint against government password access (subscriber data), the complaint against logging our browsing the Internet and the successful suit brought against the EU Commission for refusing access to documents exchanged in court proceedings.
Pending digital rights litigation: excessive government access to subscriber data, data retention, automatic number plate readers, compulsory registration of prepaid SIM cards and suit against logging the use of government websites
Representative of the popular initiative for implementing the citizens’ will on wind energy planning, and representative of the popular initiative for protecting water from fracking risks
Publication of legal essays on issues such as video surveillance, wifi liability, data retention and surveillance laws
Giving speeches at protest marches “Freiheit statt Angst” (Freedom not fear)
Expert statements for and participation in parliamentary hearings on issues such as national police law reform, data retention, international data flows to the US, liability of Internet service providers, data protection on the Internet, etc.
Contributed to the German Pirate Party’s 2012 Bundestag election programme in the chapters on freedom and fundamental rights, electoral law, democracy and the Internet and network policy
Contributed to the Pirate Party’s European Election Programme 2014 (“Security in Freedom“)
Contributed to the German Pirate Party’s 2017 Bundestag election programme, concerning the protection of freedom and privacy on the Internet and “security in freedom”
Drafted the following chapters of the election programme of the Pirate Party of Schleswig-Holstein 2017: More democracy, privacy, data protection and civil liberties, more transparency, digital compass, home affairs and justice
As a pirate deputy in the Schleswig-Holstein State Parliament:
- Logbook “Five Years of Pirates in the Kiel Parliament” (German)
- Parliamentary motions, bills and questions, e.g. on the transparency of political work (rules of procedure), on constitutional referenda, on strengthening freedom and privacy on the Internet, on surveillance drones and mobile phone tracking, on protecting the confidentiality and anonymity of telecommunications, on data misuse by police officers, on fracking in Schleswig-Holstein, on the abolition of the five-percent blocking clause applied to Landtag elections, against ancillary copyright, on affordable housing in Schleswig-Holstein, on video cameras for police patrol cars, on the introduction of judicial authorisation for covert image recordings and recordings, on video surveillance at railway stations
- Speeches on Youtube and in the video archive (as of 2014)
- Press releases
- Press reports
On Youtube und Vimeo
In the press