Data protection notes and data protection declaration

The Federal Returning Officer is committed to protecting your privacy and fully adheres to the data protection provisions. The trust placed in our organisation is of great importance to us.

With these notes we also fulfil our information obligations regarding the collection of personal data, which are laid down in Article 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation. We collect personal data every time our website is accessed and when our contact form or our online order form is used.

We have made technical and organisational arrangements ensuring that the data protection provisions are adhered to by ourselves and by our external service providers. This page is operated by the central information technology provider of the federal administration, the Federal Information Technology Centre (Informationstechnikzentrum Bund, Bernkasteler Straße 8, 53175 Bonn, Germany).

When our web pages are modified, we may have to revise this data protection declaration. We therefore recommend that you read the declaration regularly.

Personal data

Personal data is information about yourself, such as your name, address, postal address or user behaviour, if the latter is not anonymised. This does not include information which cannot be related to you.

Access to our website

Every time a user accesses the website of the Federal Returning Officer and every time a file is downloaded, information about that operation is stored in anonymised form and processed.

The following data are stored for every access/download:

Name of the page/file downloaded
Date and time of download
Data volume transferred
Download successful or not
Referrer
Equipment used
Anonymised IP address, anonymised DNS information and top level domains (TLD) of the accessing host system.

These data are evaluated statistically and for the purpose of optimising the website, after which they are deleted. We do not create user profiles.

Use of cookies and analysis tools

This website does not use cookies or analysis tools.

Contact form

There is a contact form on our website, which can be used to contact us electronically. If you choose that option, the data you enter into the input mask will be transmitted to us and used to process your request.

The data entered into the contact form will not be passed on to third parties unless this is necessary to process the request (for instance transfer of the request to another body which is in charge) or to fulfil the tasks the Federal Returning Officer has been entrusted with. There also are cases where the Federal Returning Officer is legally obliged to pass the data on to a third party. Data recipients may for instance be the other agencies of the Federation or the Länder (such as Land returning officers).

The data will be deleted once the retention obligation no longer applies.

Online order form

There is an online order form on our website, which can be used to order print media. When you place such an order, the data you enter into the input mask will be transmitted to us and used to process your order.

Data are processed in accordance with Article 6 (1) (c), (e) of the General Data Protection Regulation in conjunction with Section 3 of the Federal Data Protection Act and Section 6 (3), fourth sentence, of the Political Parties Act. These data will not be passed on to third parties. The data will be deleted within three months after the filling of the order.

Communication by e-mail or phone

It is also possible to communicate with the Federal Returning Officer by e-mail or phone. Where necessary, personal data will be processed to handle your request.

Whenever you contact us, we will process your personal data for the purpose of handling your request in order to perform our public tasks as per Article 6 (1) (c), (e) of the General Data Protection Regulation in conjunction with Section 3 of the Federal Data Protection Act and Section 6 (3) of the Act on Political Parties.

You will be notified by e-mail if our response to your enquiry should be subject to a charge. Such an e-mail will not be sent in cases where you have already placed an order in your enquiry. Processing is then based on Article 6 (1) (b) of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Use of social media

Messaging service X (formaly Twitter)

The Federal Returning Officer uses the X messaging service.

For this purpose, the Federal Returning Officer resorts to the hosting platform and the services of X Corp., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103 USA. Twitter International Company, One Cumberland Place, Fenian Street, Dublin 2 D02 AX07, Ireland, is responsible for processing the data of people living outside the United States.

Please note that any use of the X messaging service and its functions is at your own risk. This applies in particular to the use of interactive functions (such as re-tweeting, commenting). If you use X Corp. and the re-tweet function, the websites you visit will be linked with your X account and revealed to other users, data will be transferred to X Corp. and processed by X. For details on the processing of your personal data by X Corp. please refer to X’s privacy policy at: https://twitter.com/de/privacy.

The Federal Returning Officer has no influence on the type and amount of data processed by X Corp. or the way these data are processed and used or passed on to others. In this regard, she has no efficient means of monitoring, either. Please note that personal data processed by X may be transferred to a third country (for instance the United States, without an adequacy decision as provided for in Article 45 of the General Data Protection Regulation).

X Corp. may use analysis tools such as Google Analytics to process personal data. The Federal Returning Officer has no influence on whether such tools are used by X Corp. Data obtained through the use of such tools are not provided to the Federal Returning Officer in person-related form. In her account, the Federal Returning Officer can view only certain non-person-related information such as the number of profile clicks and link clicks on a specific post. The Federal Returning Officer cannot disable such tools in her X account.

You can change the X Corp. privacy settings for your account at https://twitter.com/account/settings.

To plan what information should be released and then post it in the social networks, not to miss any relevant posts and to interact with users, the Federal Returning Officer uses the product “social hub” of the provider maloon GmbH (postal address: maloon GmbH, Schütterlettenweg 4, 85053 Ingolstadt, Germany, e-mail: hallo@socialhub.io, web: https://www.socialhub.io).

Video portal YouTube

To offer video content, the Federal Returning Officer uses the hosting platform and the services of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (https://www.youtube.com).

The Federal Returning Officer has no influence on the collection of personal data and the further processing of these data by YouTube (Google). The Federal Returning Officer is not in a position to monitor the processing of personal data by Google. To find out what data are processed by YouTube (Google) and for what purposes they are used please refer to the privacy policy of Youtube/Google at: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Protection of minors

Persons under the age of 18 should not transmit any personal data to us without the consent of their parents or legal guardians. We do not request any personal data from children or adolescents. We do not knowingly collect such data and do not pass them on.

Links to websites of other providers

Our website contains links to websites of other providers. Their adherence to the data protection provisions is out of our control.

Your rights

Pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights with regard to personal data processed by the Federal Returning Officer, provided that the relevant legal requirements are met:

right of access in accordance with Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation
right to rectification in accordance with Article 16 of the General Data Protection Regulation
right to erasure in accordance with Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation
right to restriction of processing in accordance with Article 18 of the General Data Protection Regulation
right to data portability in accordance with Article 20 of the General Data Protection Regulation
right to object to processing of personal data in accordance with Article 21 of the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you believe there has been a breach of the data protection provisions, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection supervisory authority about the Federal Returning Officer processing your personal data (postal address: Bundesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit, Graurheindorfer Straße 153, 53117 Bonn, Germany).

Contact details of the party responsible

The Federal Returning Officer (Die Bundeswahlleiterin, Statistisches Bundesamt, 65180 Wiesbaden, Germany), is responsible for processing your personal data.

Contact details of our data protection commissioner

As the trust you place in the Federal Returning Officer is of great importance to us, we will be pleased to answer your questions regarding the processing of your personal data. If you have questions that have not been answered by this data protection declaration, please do not hesitate to contact our data protection commissioner.

Datenschutzbeauftragte im Statistischen Bundesamt
65180 Wiesbaden
Germany
Phone: +49 611 75-4449
Fax: +49 611 75-3972
datenschutz@destatis.de

Wiesbaden, November 2023