Minister of Justice: Police should be given duplicate keys for bugging cars

The federal and state justice ministers passed 34 resolutions at their 95th meeting in Berlin on Thursday. One of them stipulates that car manufacturers must provide law enforcement authorities with a duplicate key or access code to suspects' vehicles on request. According to the paper, a "legal obligation for third parties to cooperate in opening vehicles" is required. The aim should be to help investigators install surveillance technology for measures in accordance with sections 100c, 100f and 100h of the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO). This involves large-scale eavesdropping outside of homes as well as image recording and the use of other "technical means intended for surveillance purposes". As a rule, bugs are used for this purpose.

The Federal Ministry of Justice is now to address the issue and make a corresponding legislative proposal. The justice ministers of the federal states emphasize that the intervention measures regulated in the Code of Criminal Procedure "must also be effectively available to the police under changed factual and technical conditions". This should not "fail due to factual circumstances". The decision is based on an initiative by Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Justice Marion Gentges (CDU). She justified this by stating that the "current standards of manufacturers in technical theft prevention" were "increasingly an insurmountable hurdle" for the mandatory opening of vehicles by investigators. A third of all cars are already "equipped with alarm or warning functions" – and the trend is rising. The cooperation of manufacturers is therefore essential.

"Flood of data" for the BKA feared

Based on a proposal from Lower Saxony, the conference is calling for large platform operators such as Facebook and X to be fined heavily if they do not consistently comply with their obligation to report online crimes under the Digital Services Act (DSA). "This is urgently needed in order to continue to successfully stand up to hate and agitation online," emphasized Lower Saxony's Justice Minister Kathrin Wahlmann (SPD). Civil rights activists have long feared that the reporting obligation would result in a "flood of data" for the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and threaten "massive encroachments on freedom", including at the expense of innocent people. The justice ministers, on the other hand, consider the possibility of sanctions for violations of the requirement to be crucial.

The conference supported a further motion from Lower Saxony on asset recovery for high-profile crimes with regard to social media operators: "If perpetrators "post their crimes online or even stream them live in order to publicly boast about them, this is morally at the lowest level", Wahlmann emphasized. "It's even worse when they earn money from it via social networks. There is an urgent need for legislative action here: the state must be able to confiscate such illegal income."

Police should be allowed to break in for state Trojans

The justice ministers also want to tighten up the "security package", which has largely been put on hold by states with CDU/CSU government participation. To this end, they have adopted a motion from Bavaria, Berlin and Brandenburg to improve the investigative possibilities for encrypted messenger services such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. To install state Trojans on cell phones, computers, etc. for the purpose of source tapping, the conference once again considers it necessary to "examine whether the creation of a legal right to enter the home of the accused" would be expedient. In other words, the police should be allowed to break in. This is necessary due to the "technical complexity" of installing the surveillance software. Former Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) recently strictly rejected such a proposal by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). According to the conference, radio cell searches are also to be expanded and the use of cross-procedural automated search and analysis platforms made possible.

The resolutions of the autumn conference of justice ministers at a glance.

(vbr)