Study for the federal government: Monitoring: Berlin police have the least powers

Shortly before handing over to its successors, the outgoing federal government published a “surveillance computation for Germany”. This shows that Berlin, the state authority for the protection of the constitution and the prosecutors, grants fewer powers than the other countries.

Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Research into Crime, Security and Law, which, on behalf of the Interior and Ministry of Justice, created a report on the state powers for Berlin determined a “overall authority value” of 209.

However, the scientists point out that the surveillance standards applicable there provide strict rules, which is “reflecting in rather moderate intensity values”.

According to the report, more in the lower area-between 223 and 238-are the powers of the security authorities of Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony. The police and the protection of the constitution in Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and the Saarland are at the authority of 240 and higher.

No too big differences

In the overall view, however, no “surveillance -savvy” branches or federal states are identified, at least not at the level of laws and rules. However, due to the different depth of detail and documentation methods of the various authorities, the scientists could not comprehensive how much the individual powers were used in practice.

The monitoring methods under consideration include, for example, the query of telecommunications traffic data, secret access to dormant communication or the query of passenger data. Overall, the researchers found that “the intensity of intervention of the large majority of the powers examined is consistently in a wide range of difficulties”.

Online search is rarely used

More transparency is desirable for the future, the report says. Otherwise, “the dimension-threatening dimension” of individual measures in the public discussion can be easily overestimated or underestimated. For example, the powers for online searches – a secret state interference in information technology systems – regularly led to excited debates without being charged how rarely this is used.

The longstanding storage obligations for account details, on the other hand, hardly became social awareness, although this gained increasing importance with the rapidly growing use of electronic payment systems.