en.Wedoany.com Reported - The German Bundesrat has raised objections to the federal government's draft law on expanding digital investigative powers, demanding significant tightening of the relevant provisions. The legislative package concerns automated image comparison on the internet and AI-assisted data analysis for criminal prosecution. In Friday's plenary session, the state chamber made it clear that it wants to grant the federal authority a stronger role as an IT service provider and central interface for surveillance, while lowering the barriers for large-scale data comparisons in criminal proceedings.

One of the focal points of contention is the draft law amending the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO), which aims to regulate investigators' use of cross-procedural search and analysis platforms. Through this draft, the federal government is responding to a February 2023 ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, which tied the police use of such systems to strict rule-of-law standards and demanded a clear legal basis. However, the Bundesrat believes that the new version of Section 98e of the StPO, proposed by Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), is technically inadequate and insufficient in practical scope.

The core dispute lies in the coupling of criminal prosecution and danger prevention. According to the federal government's intention, data used for automated analysis in criminal proceedings may only be further processed if it has previously been consolidated within the framework of a police platform. The states consider this regulation too vague and question the meaning of this "connection." The government draft stipulates that only data already consolidated under current state laws on danger prevention may be processed. According to the Bundesrat, this coupling often results in painstakingly created AI analysis tools being unusable in traditional criminal prosecution. For example, when clarifying large-scale child abuse cases or organized crime structures, the state law prerequisites for preventive danger prevention in individual cases are often not met. Additionally, states that have not yet laid the legal foundation for automated data analysis in their own police laws would face difficulties. Therefore, the Bundesrat demands independent authority for prior data consolidation solely for criminal prosecution purposes. The states also complain that the new analysis systems, while intended to access police databases, should not access data lawfully collected by public prosecutors' offices.

The Internet Industry Association eco opposes this. The organization primarily rejects the planned function of automated biometric comparison with publicly accessible data on the internet, arguing this would effectively transform the open internet into a state search and identification space. Klaus Landefeld, a board member for infrastructure and networks at eco, warned of the serious consequences of establishing biometric wanted files. He believes that allowing publicly available content to be automatically searched for faces or identities blurs the line between targeted criminal prosecution and general digital surveillance of the entire population. eco acknowledges that effective investigative tools are needed in the digital space, but these must be strictly limited under the rule of law, proportionate, technically practical, and evidence-based. What Germany needs more are targeted, effective, and controllable tools, not a reserve digital surveillance architecture.

The states' desire for more powers is also reflected in the law strengthening the digital investigative options of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The states demand the creation of a new, cross-police central auxiliary body to compensate for gaps in security powers within their own state laws. The federal government intends to grant the BKA the right to issue preventive security directives ("quick freeze") to telecommunications operators under the new Section 10b of the BKA Act, as long as the actually responsible state police or criminal prosecution authority has not yet been identified. The states are not satisfied with this; they demand that the BKA, in its function as a central authority, issue security directives even when the responsible state police is known but the BKA itself is not yet authorized to collect data. This would make the BKA act as an extended arm, having providers "freeze" communication data until conditions for normal data queries under state law are met. The legal dilemma behind this is that, due to the federal government's exclusive legislative competence in telecommunications law, states lack the power to issue their own security directives to network operators. Therefore, the BKA should step in as a nationwide central service provider responsible for freezing communication data.

The Bundesrat wants to extend this "freeze power" strategy further to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Similar to the BKA, the BfV should also obtain this power for state authorities. The state chamber justifies this with hypothetical scenarios, such as when intelligence agencies receive vague clues about an attack plan from a network whose actors and communication characteristics are still unclear, making the preventive preservation of communication data urgent for later evaluation. The Bundesrat wants to smoothly pass another pillar of the surveillance package. It raised no objections to the draft law on strengthening digital investigative powers in police work. The direction is clear: where the federal government hesitates or sets obstacles due to constitutional constraints, the states demand maximum technical freedom of action and the centralization of digital surveillance tools.

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