“A law that is scrapped in Karlsruhe tomorrow will not help anyone”

The public interest was so great and the number of experts invited was so high that the Bundestag’s Interior Committee had to move to a larger room on Monday. For three hours, they wanted to discuss the two planned security laws The drafts contain in law what the Federal Government wants to do after the Attack in Solingen planned to improve internal security in Germany.

Time is pressing, the traffic light parties want Demonstrate ability to actBut it will probably not happen as quickly as expected. During the hearing it became clear that the experts from all areas either rejected the security package completely or they firmly believe that the laws will fail at the Federal Constitutional Court (BVfG) or even the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

So where did the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), which is responsible for both draft laws, do a sloppy job in the opinion of the experts?

Gun laws: Little digitization, too few staff

In future, employees in the more than 550 weapons authorities in Germany will have to use four computer systems to ensure that a small spare part for a sports rifle can be delivered to Germany from another EU country. The new laws would add three times as many to the 1.6 million queries already made to the weapons authorities by investigative agencies such as the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Police (BPol).

Although these queries, for example for permission to carry a weapon, are partly carried out digitally, they still have to be checked manually by employees of the weapons authorities. “Bureaucratic madness,” sums it up as Niels Heinrich. The senior criminal inspector helped set up the National Weapons Register, whose control center he now runs. He knows the gun laws in all their details – and complains that the security laws do not provide for more staff despite the additional work involved.

The experts are also critical of the no-go zones and new knife laws. They only harass ordinary citizens and do not stop potential attackers. The two representatives of the police unions also criticize the fact that they do not have the personnel to carry out additional checks.

Voice, image and video: biometric comparison

The experts had a multitude of open questions regarding the law’s biometric facial recognition. IT legal expert Dennis-Kenji Kipker warned of the “official data disaster” and judged: “The instrument is dangerous because more and more data is being stored on the Internet. We are getting closer to the transparent citizen than ever before.”

Many citizens need to be found on the Internet for professional reasons. The new laws even go beyond the controversial data retention “This surpasses everything we have seen so far in terms of digital surveillance: advance investigations, mass data analysis, database merging and artificial intelligence are combined here,” says the professor of IT security law.

Innocent citizens end up in police databases

It is not just about usual personal data such as name or address, i.e. traffic data from telecommunications surveillance, but also about sensitive biometric data that is to be processed and evaluated using algorithms and AI. The federal government’s proposal contradicts the Federal Constitutional Court’s 1983 ruling on the census, said Kipker. The ruling established the fundamental right to informal self-determination at the time.

He is not the only one who sees lawsuits from civil society as the last option to stop the laws. A similar assessment The Federal Data Protection Commissioner also gave: “It doesn’t help anyone to make a law that will be scrapped in Karlsruhe tomorrow,” said Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider. As things stand, a large amount of data can also be collected from witnesses, victims or innocent people. “Everyone who reports a burglary will be recorded and stored for ten years if the crime remains unsolved,” said the data protection officer.

© dpa/Carsten Koall

Stephan Schindler from the University of Kassel was somewhat less critical. He did not see any contradiction with European or constitutional law per se, but called for additional restrictions, as biometric comparison with data publicly available on the Internet is already a significant infringement of fundamental rights. Several experts pointed out that the threshold at which biometric comparison takes place is too low. “In the future, this will be permitted in cases of sports betting fraud, which has nothing to do with the legal aim of combating terrorism,” said Schindler.

Martina Link, Vice President of the BKA, gave examples from practice. Her investigators received information about people who were members of the Islamic State are or are supposed to be, but for whom no or only incomplete personal details are available. “Currently, the photographs from the tips can only be compared with the police’s stock of images. This means that if the people have never been fingerprinted, they cannot be identified,” said Link. At the same time, the biometric comparison offers advantages over a public search. According to the BKA deputy, investigations can be carried out covertly until there is no longer any fear of someone going underground or destroying evidence.

AI analysis: one program, infinite data

Philipp Wittmann, judge at the Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg, described the automated data analysis using Artificial Intelligence (AI)The judge said that the text of the law does not provide an overview of which data sets are being processed, for which purpose and with which methods. Professor of legal informatics Christoph Sorge said that “creating a huge database with biometric data from tens of millions of Internet users would be problematic even if we did not use AI.” He asked how such volumes of data could be protected at all. There is currently no provision for this in the security laws.

It is also unclear where the images, videos and audio tracks for the AI-supported databases come from. “Do we ask Tiktok whether they will pass the data on to our investigative authorities?” Sorge said. Three options are possible: a separate database for the BKA, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and the police authorities; a real-time comparison with the Internet every time; or outsourcing to private companies.

The security law also leaves this question open. According to Kipker, the former is legally possible because there are already examples such as the anti-terror database. The experts believe that real-time comparison is not technically feasible. And outsourcing to external providers is legally difficult. “Companies like Clearview are constantly being fined because there is no legal basis for their work,” said the IT law expert.

Fines against IT companies

For IT lawyer Schindler, it is also still unclear to what extent the federal government’s plans could come into conflict with the AI ​​regulation. In his opinion, however, the transfer of training data to third parties, as is now provided for in the BKA law, should be removed. The AI ​​should also learn from all freely available images, videos and audio clips. Finally, he spoke out in favor of further investigative powers: “We must not artificially blind the police.”

BKA Vice President Link underlined the importance of AI analysis for the BKA, especially in its function as a central office for the police authorities. Artificial intelligence can link complex data sets and process them in a structured and automated manner. This enables investigators to identify connections and relationship networks more easily than before. “Each database has to be researched individually for names or social media accounts, which means additional work and a loss of time,” said Link.

Further timetable for the security laws

So far, the security laws proposed by the SPD, Greens and FDP have only been debated in the first reading in the Bundestag. The drafts are not on the parliamentary agenda for this week’s session. This means that the Bundesrat will not be able to deal with them conclusively in its session on Friday, September 27th. The earliest that work will continue is October, and the laws will not come into force until November.

The situation is different with the demand of the CDU/CSU faction. The Union had launched its own version of the security package. This includes, among other things, rejections at the German borders. The Bundestag will vote on this on Thursday, September 26, following a debate lasting around 70 minutes. A majority for the opposition’s proposal is not expected.