Press
The 70s are over and the fax machines are being thrown out of the Bundestag. With this step, the parliament wants to finally move into the 21st century.
Berlin – No other device is as representative of the botched digitalization in Germany as the fax machine. One of the first of its kind saw the light of day in 1974, as the head of the collection at the Heusenstamm Communication Museum of the daily News reported. The Infotec 6002 stands there as a relic of a bygone era, while its descendants can still be found in doctor’s offices, administration buildings and government offices.
But there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel in the digital desert of Germany. After decades, the Bundestag is getting rid of its trusty fax machines and is putting everything into digitization.
Bundestag gets rid of the fax machine – a milestone in German digitization
A whole lot of fax numbers will probably no longer be reachable in the future. The German Bundestag has decided to ban the outdated technology. Since the beginning of the month, faxing has been “out of use” in the upper house, as the German press agency (dpa) reported. The Bundestag administration has ensured that all work processes that previously had to be carried out using a fax machine have been digitalized.
In November 2023, the Budget Committee called on the Bundestag administration to remove all fax machines from the Bundestag by June 30, 2024. A corresponding resolution was only passed by the Council of Elders in 2021, which stipulated that they should be abolished by 2024. This will bring the Bundestag “into the 21st century,” said a post by the then parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, Marco Buschmann, on the online platform X.
The current parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, Torsten Herbst, has recognised how overdue this step was based on visitor reactions. “In recent years, visitors have repeatedly expressed their surprise that there are still fax machines in front of the committee meeting rooms,” he told the dpa.
It is not possible to do without fax – number for questions remains
Technology nostalgics don’t need to worry too much, though. It seems that the Bundestag can’t quite part with the retro machines either. Even after the move to digitization, a fax number for citizens’ questions will be retained. The messages will then be digitized accordingly.
It remains to be seen when the rest of Germany will follow the Bundestag’s technological venture. At least in Bavaria, Digital Minister Fabian Mehring (Free Voters) has “had enough of faxes,” as the Digital Ministry humorously put it in a December 2023 statement. “Our Bavaria is a high-tech country. We should therefore lead the way nationwide and be the first federal state to pull the plug on fax in public administration,” said the minister.
It is difficult to say how Mehring’s “fax ban” will continue. According to a spokeswoman for the Digital Ministry, the number of fax machines in Bavarian authorities is to be drastically reduced this year, reported the dpaHowever, the cabinet must decide on concrete measures and a binding timetable. However, the coalition partner CSU could cause problems. Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) points out: “There are people who want to fax us something,” he said in an interview with the Bavarian Broadcasting. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Security risk fax – Chaos Computer Club warns of hacker attacks
“From an IT security perspective, such all-in-one printers are a black box,” said Yaniv Balmas at the 2018 Chaos Computer Club Congress in Leipzig. “Sending a fax with malicious code can lead to complete control over the computer.”
The administrations in Bremen were even instructed by the State Commissioner for Data Protection not to send any personal data via fax machines. These are extremely unsafe and do not comply with the current data protection regulations. “Due to these imponderables, a fax has the same level of security in terms of confidentiality as an unencrypted email, which is rightly seen as the digital equivalent of an openly visible postcard,” says the website of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. (dpa/nhi)
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