Data protectionist complains: Berlin police have 7.5 million cases in storage

The Berlin police's state system for information, communication and processing (Poliks) is increasingly becoming a legally questionable data graveyard. An audit carried out in 2023 by the State Data Protection Commissioner Meike Kamp revealed that the law enforcement officers currently hold around 7.5 million controversial cases from the police IT system. The inspector criticizes the fact that the police are unable to justify the selection of this data, some of which goes back decades, in a comprehensible manner. As a rule, the police are allowed to keep personal data on suspects for five to ten years, depending on the severity of the offense. Shorter periods apply to juveniles and children. Information that investigators collect preventively may be stored for three years.

"Longer storage of data that is actually ready for deletion is often essential for the work of investigative committees," explained Kamp at the presentation of her 2023 annual report. Nevertheless, the information should not be stored "unconditionally". It must be "necessary for the investigation committee to perform its tasks". The commissioner therefore believes that the police and parliament have a duty to "ensure compliance with data protection regulations": Law enforcement officers should be able to explain in a comprehensible manner "why they do not delete certain data". The requesting parliament should monitor and support this process.

The dispute has been dragging on for a long time. As early as 2019, Kamp's predecessor Maja Smoltczyk complained for the first time that the police had not deleted any entries from the extensive database since June 2013, thereby violating storage regulations. According to Berlin police employees, a time limit and deletion concept is "implemented and automated" in Polik's database. However, the authority had completely suspended these routines, they said in 2019, initially referring to a "deletion moratorium" issued in 2013 as part of the investigation into NSU terrorism. A second requirement not to remove data from Poliks for the time being has been in place since the beginning of 2017 due to the attack on Breitscheidplatz in December 2016.

Suspicion of "unauthorized chain storage"

According to Kamp's latest report, the stockpile now also includes "2.25 million cases that could not be resolved, 30,000 cases that were created before 1995 and 400,000 recorded traffic accidents". Although the data has been moved to an access-restricted protected area since 2019, it is still a very extensive collection of cases ready for deletion. The suspicion of "unauthorized chain storage" is obvious. Despite various appeals, however, the police are sticking to "indiscriminate" storage. Comparable audits at the public prosecutor's offices and the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had shown that they were able to plausibly explain how and which files that were ready for deletion were sorted out on the occasion of the deletion moratoriums.

Berlin data protection experts regularly criticize police officers for misusing access to police files to retrieve information for non-official purposes. In 2023, Kamps initiated 35 relevant proceedings against officers and imposed a total of 32 fines. These included flirting attempts and the pursuit of other, mostly private interests. Last year, the data protection officer also issued fines totaling 549,410 euros against private bodies. Two central cases: Deutsche Kreditbank (DKB) had to pay 300,000 euros because it did not comply with its transparency obligations in relation to an automated individual scoring decision. Another company monitored three trainees at their workplaces using video cameras hidden in sockets. It got off lightly with a fine of 4000 euros.

(mma)