German police use of automatic data analysis tool from Palantir is unconstitutional

The German Federal Criminal Court has ruled that the use of automated data analysis software from the American company Palantir, as used by the police in Hesse, is not in line with the constitution.

The Federal Constitutional Court writes that the regulations in Hesse and Hamburg that make this deployment possible are unconstitutional. In Hesse, the software has been used since 2017 to process stored personal data via automated data analyses; This is done via the HessenDATA platform, which the police in Hesse has already used thousands of times. In Hamburg, processing by the police has not yet actually been used and was limited to automated data interpretation. Hesse must change the legislation before September 30 and the system will not be installed in Hamburg.

The Court finds that the legislation for the use of the software conflicts with the right to informational self-determination, or the say that citizens have over what happens to their personal data. That judgment was made because, according to the judges, insufficient thresholds have been built in to use the data. According to the Court, the legislation makes it possible to further use the data as a precautionary measure to prevent certain criminal acts. The rules are formulated too broadly, both in terms of data and the methods that the police may use, according to the Federal Criminal Court. This use is only allowed in the event of a concrete danger and the bar is much higher than the legislation in Hesse and Hamburg prescribes.

The judgment makes it clear that the police may in principle engage in data mining and make automated connections with the aim of preventing criminal acts, but the law must then specify very clearly under what circumstances this is permissible. In the case of Hesse and Hamburg, this was not sufficiently the case and the constitutional right to informational self-determination was therefore violated.

This case was brought last year by the German organization Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte. The organization believes the software could be used to predict criminal activity, which would increase the risk of errors and discrimination by authorities. The organization states that the ruling has significantly reduced the risk of the police targeting innocent civilians. “Today the Federal Criminal Court banned the police from looking into the crystal ball and formulated strict guidelines for the use of intelligent software in police work. This was important because the automation of police work has only just begun,” say the head of the legal team of the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte.