After the decision of the Kammergericht, it is now open what will happen to the collected data from 77 "screened" People happens
The Berlin Court of Appeals has ruled that the highly controversial dragnet search for potential Islamic terrorist attackers, initiated by the country’s police president in September 2001 after the attacks on New York and Washington, was legal. In a decision published yesterday, Monday, it states that it is not a matter of a present and concrete danger to carry out such a search with a coarse sieve on a computer basis. In the last instance, the judges thus diametrically opposed their colleagues at the Regional Court, who had ied a contrary ruling in January, declaring the dragnet inadmissible in view of an unproven acute danger situation (dragnet in Berlin declared inadmissible).
The search history after "Sleepers", The fact that the two groups of people, who up to now have lived an apparently normal everyday life as students, for example, and could thus at most be conspicuous by commonalities in their lives, is thus once again enriched by a contentious chapter in Berlin. It had begun on 17. September with unlegitimized data collection from agencies such as the Hahn-Meitner Institute, the water utilities, as well as universities: the required court order was missing at that time. She was only born on 20. September after an initial rejection of the criminalists’ request and a renewed justification by the police.
The series of mishaps continued during the course of the data collection, which was opposed primarily by student representatives and individual university administrators. Thus, the grid characteristics were initially defined far too broadly – and, moreover, became publicly known early on (Rasterfahndung in Deutschland). Among others the following characteristics were given "male gender, Islamic religious affiliation, legal residence, flight training and no criminal record in general. The fact that this could not lead to hit traps, because none of the obligated bodies had all this data, was noticed by the police only after the iance of the decision.
The search criteria were then narrowed down at the end of September. An arrangement that meets the requirements of state laws at least "in essence" despite "certain lack" only on the 24th of September were there any. October, complains Berlin data protection commissioner Hansjorg Garstka in his annual report 2001 (Internet becomes the main problem area in data protection). In total, 58.000 data records to the police, which were not reviewed until January 2002, shortly before the verdict of the regional court. The combination of traits initially applied to 109 individuals, of which the police considered 77 to be relevant for further investigation.
The explosive data sets are currently still being kept under lock and key (screening without a dragnet). It is not yet clear whether they will be used as a basis for searching for suspects. Senator of the Interior Erhart Korting (SPD) initially only buried the decision of the Superior Court, to which he himself had appealed, without giving more specifics about further investigations. The State Criminal Police Office has announced that the next steps will be taken by "tested" are. "Should the police vote not to use the data, the only question now is how to delete the data", a spokesman for the Berlin data protection commissioner told Telepolis. However, it is also conceivable that the files will be put back into the databases of the state and federal criminal investigation offices, where they were initially removed after the ruling of the regional court.