How about if all citizens were permanently under constant general suspicion?

The constitutional states fundamentally distinguishes from the far-reaching and by what means the state is allowed to intervene in civil rights from autocratic and dictatorial systems. In a constitutional state, state power is limited by legal regulations, which are controlled by independent courts. These constitutional barriers are particularly important in theEnsuring public (or “inside”) security and law enforcement. In Germany – as in many other democratic countries – various institutions are responsible for this.

Police duties and powers

The police have the task of averting dangers for “security and order”. At the same time, police officers act as “investigators of the public prosecutor’s office” and are subordinate to their instructions. In order to fulfill their duties, the police may apply coercive measures within the scope of their legal powers, such as searches, hearings of witnesses, seizures or arrests.In addition to classic investigations, police authorities are increasingly using “special means” for data collection, such as observations, the use of undercover investigators or the grid search.

Preventive measures and data collect in advance of criminal offenses

It is worrying that the police are collecting more and more data in the run-up to criminal offenses or specific dangers. A key keyword here is “Preventive Combat Crime”. This is neither classical prosecution nor direct security. Rather, this procedure is based on abstract risk assessments, according to whichcertain persons – especially those with previous crimes – could pose potential further dangers. In order to prevent these risks, the persons concerned are observed or registered in particular, for example through identification measures, storage in police databases or by storing their DNA data in a central file atFederal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The information obtained in this way could be helpful at a later date if the person becomes delinquent again.

Automated data collection without concrete suspicion

It is also problematic that data is increasingly being collected without any initial suspicion or concrete danger, for example in the context of the storage of telecommunications data or by automatically evaluating license plates. This represents a consistent continuation of the development described, but with the decisive difference that predominantlyData is collected by people who have not committed any misconduct and who have no indication of a delinquency. This creates a general suspicion to all citizens.

Endangerment of the rule of law by expanding the surveillance

The tendency to always prefer and expand police data collection endangers the rule of law itself. The thresholds for state surveillance and registration are constantly being reduced and threaten to disappear completely. If this trend continues, data on each person could be collected and stored in almost all areas of life at some point,Since it cannot be ruled out that this information will eventually be useful in connection with danger averting or criminal prosecution.

Limits and constitutional controls

Not every requested or decided expansion of police powers meets the strict requirements of our constitution. It is gratifying that the Federal Constitutional Court has had some excessive police or intelligence powers in recent years – such as acoustic living space surveillance, for raster searches, for preventive telecommunications surveillanceby the police or to the powers of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in the strategic telecommunications monitoring – has restricted. Nevertheless, parliaments and governments must be required to avoid such cross-borders not even occurring.