Particle.news

Berlin Battles Ongoing IT Outage After Hack as School‑Safety Plan Raises Privacy Concerns

City officials say remediation will take more days as experts warn that a published E‑Government report with detailed IT project data could help attackers.

Overview

  • Parts of Berlin’s senatorial administrations remain offline after a hacker attack and Mayor Kai Wegner says work to restore systems will take several more days with no confirmed loss of sensitive data so far.
  • A 163‑page March E‑Government and ICT report is publicly available and lists detailed project statuses and infrastructure plans that IT experts say can serve as a useful information base for attackers even though it does not name explicit software flaws.
  • The CDU has released an eight‑point school‑safety plan that would ban smartphones in primary schools, limit their use in secondary schools, create specialized small classes for violent or radicalized pupils, and expand supervised prayer rooms and formal religion lessons.
  • The party proposes faster intervention powers for youth welfare offices, changes that could allow some measures without parental consent, and more data exchange between schools, Jugendämter and security authorities including information about pupils flagged as 'Gefährder' or potential threats.
  • Both developments are playing out before the Abgeordnetenhaus election and could affect daily services, privacy rules and social‑law frameworks with the CDU seeking a Bundesrat route to change youth‑welfare law and critics warning of legal and civil‑liberties trade‑offs.