GERMANY: Police "trawling" for suspect foreigners
01 January 2002
After 11 September last year, German police units started collecting data on young men with Islamic background from universities, registration offices, health insurance companies and Germany's "Central Foreigners Register" (Ausländerzentralregister -AZR). The practice of so-called "trawling" or "dragnet control" (Rasterfahndung), a blanket "non-suspect related" police operation, which collects and compares vast amounts of data sets on individuals according to vague criteria, was introduced in the 1970s in the wake of Red Army Fraction (RAF) activities and has been criticised for its violation of data protection rights. Student unions and affected individuals have initiated legal proceedings against the practice with different regional courts. Three regional and appeal courts of the Länder Hesse, Berlin and North-Rhine Westphalia have now reached a decision. Hesse (Court of Appeal in Frankfurt/Mainz) and Berlin (regional court) found for the complainants, while North-Rhine Westphalia (Court of Appeal in Düsseldorf) deemed the data collection on people with Islamic background legal. One victim will test his rejected complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court.
Data protection violated
Many civil liberties groups and student unions complained about the initiation of the far-reaching data collection operation and argued it was useless for the detection of possible terrorists. The police forces used the "profile" of the Arab students from the University of Hamburg who were allegedly linked to the attacks in the USA, and in some Länder demanded that universities hand over data sets on all their male students, but mostly male Arab students. The "profile" effectively makes every male Arab student in Germany a suspected terrorist, (see Statewatch vol 11 no 5). In the case of North-Rhine Westphalia, the police demanded data on all men born between 1960 and 1983 from public and private institutions; around 10,000 students have been under surveillance in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) alone. Rather than just representing a data protection violation however, student unions argue the practice is racist and explicitly discriminates against people with an Islamic background, be it through a declared Muslim faith or birth in an Islamic country declared to host "terrorists".
Dozens of legal proceedings were initiated by individuals and student unions against the handing over of university data to police forces and courts in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main (Hesse) have now declared the dragnet control to be in violation of data protection rights (Recht auf informationelle Selbsbetimmung). In the case of Hesse, the Court of Appeal overruled a ruling from the regional court in Wiesbaden. The legal basis for the operations would only exist if there was an "immediate danger" of terrorist attacks - the courts held that this danger had not arisen. The Berlin court declared that the police could only justify the practice if it "had to avert an immediate danger to national security or the security of the Länder or danger to the life, limb or freedom of a person. An immediate danger however, is neither justified by the appellant (Berlin chief of police), nor can it otherwise be detected." The Court of Appeal in Düsseldorf however, held that an immediate danger existed which justified the actions on people who were nationals of Islamic countries deemed to be countries of origin of terrorists by the authorities, or "if they were born in those countries, or if they are members of the Islamic faith" (court decision 11.2.02). At the same time, the ruling declared the inclusion of German nationals in the provisions as illegal.
Rulings contradictory and racist
The first two rulings were welcomed by civil liberties groups and student unions but the court decision from NRW was criticised. On the one hand, student unions pointed out that earlier first instance court decisions and the latest Court of Appeal decision from Düsseldorf stand in direct opposit