Confederation violates personal rights of thousands

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The release of the entire contents of the mailbox of Peter Lauener (52) violates not only the personal rights of the former chief communicator of Interior Minister Alain Berset (51), but also the numerous mail recipients, such as the report on “Information release by the BIT in the Case of Disclosure Orders in Criminal Proceedings.” Blick and others have filed this with the Department of Finance (FDF) under the Disclosure Act, and now the BIT is being threatened with lawsuits.

Instead of six weeks as requested by special investigator Peter Marti (72), the Federal Office for Information Technology and Telecommunications (BIT) delivered Lauener’s emails for years. The investigative report suggests there are thousands of email recipients, including journalists, whose personal rights have been violated by the BIT. Special Investigator Marti even complained to the BIT about the over-delivery, but he used the emails anyway. Marti claims to have found evidence in Lauener’s emails that he sent Marc Walder (57), the head of Blick-Verlang Ringier, preliminary information about corona measures.

“Acquittal” for Maurer & Co.

As the responsible federal councilor Karin Keller-Sutter (59) wrote to BIT director Dirk Lindemann on April 11, 2023, the report does not address the responsibility of individual people in the federal office. Yet the 19-page report that investigated whether there were politically motivated instructions from the then department leadership, led by Finance Minister Ueli Maurer (72), to release more information than Special Investigator Marti had requested. Both the FUITT and the General Secretariat of the FDF denied this. This is also consistent with the findings of the study.

Releasing the entire contents of the letterbox was in line with common practice. According to an overview presented by the BIT, between 2018 and early 2023, a total of 26 notification and safety orders were received in a criminal procedure. Other cases involved violations of professional secrecy, but also fraud, forgery and pornography.

Technically limited?

The BIT justified the practice mainly with the argument that a limitation to a certain time is only possible with access to the e-mails. However, clarifications showed that it is technically possible to limit the data to a fixed period. This also includes emails deleted during this period.

Radio SRF’s “Rendez-vous” first reported that its release was illegal. It was already known that the FDF did not lead to criminal prosecution. The report now shows that the finance department assumed law enforcement would take action.

Also in other cases

As Blick reported, the federal prosecutor’s office has indeed launched preliminary investigations for criminal proceedings. Finally, in Peter Lauener’s BIT, there is a criminal charge against strangers.

The fact that the Federal Bureau always published the full contents of the mail — which Keller-Sutter has now disabled — doesn’t make matters any better. This also violated the personal rights of postal recipients in a few other cases.

Waiting for the criminal prosecution

And the fact that the IT department knows nothing about the technical possibilities to make a timely mail selection does not reflect well on FUITT. The good news, however, is that there is no evidence that any malicious intent was behind the release of all of Lauener’s emails.

Only: The investigation was conducted by the legal department of the FDF. With this she acquits her own bosses and colleagues at the BIT of the allegations. Should there be a lawsuit against employees, it will be interesting to see if the judges come to the same conclusion.

Source:Blick