"Breaking a taboo": Buschmann stops Faeser during secret home searches

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) has unequivocally opposed a draft law by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) that would allow the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) to secretly enter and search homes and install state Trojans. "There will be no powers to secretly snoop into homes," he made clear on social networks. "Any plans" in this direction would not be implemented. The Liberal emphasized: "We don't do that in a constitutional state. That would be an absolute breach of taboo."

FDP interior affairs expert Manuel Höferlin had also previously warned against overly serious encroachments on fundamental rights: "The secrecy of the searches in particular makes the plan difficult because the Free Democrats are not in favor of a Stasi 2.0." The law enforcement authorities need "appropriate and strong investigative tools", but these must be "well thought out". Otherwise, the rule of law, which should protect the freedom of all citizens, would abolish itself. Criminal defense lawyer Alexandra Braun said that secret state interventions should be the absolute exception in a constitutional state and require very good reasons. It was to be feared that today it would be about potential terrorists, "tomorrow perhaps about suspects in abuse cases".

Above all, Faeser wanted to make it easier for the BKA to install the federal Trojan or other spy software for secret online searches and source telecommunication surveillance on IT systems such as smartphones or computers. The BKA must be able to "physically access the IT devices", according to the explanatory memorandum to the draft, which Netzpolitik.org has since published. This is the "technically most secure and fastest way to implement" such spying programs without the "involvement of the target person".

Facial recognition and big data analysis still open

The state parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern did not shy away from breaking the taboo that Buschmann deplored in 2020. With the votes of the governing SPD and CDU parliamentary groups and the opposition AfD, it passed a reform of the police law that includes a "right of entry" for law enforcement officers to prepare online searches. Her predecessors Horst Seehofer (CSU) and Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) also made relevant proposals before Faeser.

It remains to be seen what will happen with other projects from Faeser's draft, which has not yet been agreed within the federal government. For example, the federal and state police forces are to be allowed to carry out "biometric comparisons with publicly accessible data from the internet" when searching for suspected terrorists and serious criminals. According to the paper, this applies not only to suspects, but also to "contact persons, victims and witnesses". In addition to facial photos, automated recognition is to include other identifying features such as "movement, action or speech patterns". This plan also contradicts the coalition agreement. The Minister of the Interior also wants to allow the police to technically merge "different data sets" for big data analyses and thus generate "new knowledge". The Federal Constitutional Court declared the use of automated data analysis by law enforcement officers in Hesse and Hamburg to be unconstitutional in 2023.

(anw)