According to the ruling, the powers of the BKA are partly unconstitutional

Some of the powers of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) to collect and store data are unconstitutional. This was ruled by the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Those affected would sometimes have their fundamental right to informational self-determination violated. A constitutional complaint by the Society for Freedom Rights (GFF) against the BKA law, which was reformed in 2017, was partially successful.

Among other things, the court criticized the secret surveillance of contacts of suspects. Secret surveillance measures represented a particularly serious intrusion, said court president Stephan Harbarth. If such measures are only directed against contact persons, there must be a “specific, individual proximity of those affected to the danger to be identified”. The corresponding regulation in the BKA law does not meet these requirements.

GFF celebrates “success for civil liberties”

The First Senate also set limits on the storage of personal data. There is no sufficient storage threshold here. Harbarth said that being a defendant alone does not allow a reliable conclusion to be drawn about the sufficient probability of a relevant connection to future crimes. There is also a lack of sufficiently differentiated regulation regarding the storage period.

The GFF had filed a constitutional complaint with the highest judges in Karlsruhe against several provisions of the BKA Act and called for specific constitutional standards for the collection and storage of data. The complainants included lawyers, a political activist and two football fans who ended up in police databases.

The GFF celebrated the verdict as a “success for civil liberties.” The decision strengthens the right to determine one’s own data and is also a request to federal and state legislators to formulate new surveillance powers in a sufficiently specific and precise manner.

Not the first constitutional review of the powers of the BKA and Co.

“The security package is currently another law in the Bundestag that provides for far-reaching tightening of security law – once again going far beyond the limits of the Basic Law,” said GFF lawyer Bijan Moini. “Out of respect for the constitution, these tightening measures that violate fundamental rights must urgently be scaled back – before the Federal Constitutional Court does it again.”

The Federal Constitutional Court had already ruled on the extensive powers of the security authorities in 2016 – and declared some of them unconstitutional. The BKA law therefore had to be improved. The new version has been in force since May 2018.

The Bundestag must now revise the law again. Until new regulations are introduced, the regulations will continue to apply with certain provisions – but at the latest until July 31, 2025.