The Society for Freedom Rights (GFF) and climate activists have filed another constitutional complaint against the Bavarian Constitutional Protection Act (BeVSG). The petition to the Federal Constitutional Court is directed against the regulation that allows the Bavarian domestic secret service to pass on personal data to private entities such as employers or landlords under very few constraints. The GFF complains that this could lead to serious consequences such as job loss or social exclusion for those affected. It sees this as a significant interference in the right to informational self-determination.
Advertisement
Such a practice can only be justified to avert some danger, The civil rights organization said. The highest German court should therefore set “clear standards and strict limits for the disclosure of information by the secret services” to private individuals in general. David Wedermann, lawyer and procedure coordinator at the GFF, points out that the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution can already carry out extensive surveillance of citizens as a whole. Due to the new requirement in the BayVSG, the domestic secret service is now allowed to disseminate the collected data “throughout the private and business environment without the knowledge of the affected people”. For example, he could secretly ensure that activists lose their jobs or are kicked out of clubs. Such methods have no place in a democracy.
The scoop: Democratic participation is becoming more difficult
The complainants are active in groups and protest movements that are seen as left-wing extremist or a suspicious case by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution. These include “Ende Geländer” and the “Anti-capitalist open climate meeting in Munich”. They complain that given the changed circumstances they now have to think twice about which events to attend or whom to talk to. This slows down democratic participation and endangers privacy. Domestic secret services have repeatedly tried to discredit protest movements and civil society participation as extremist.
Organisations classified as left-wing extremist had already filed a constitutional complaint against the BayVSG in 2017 with the support of the GFF. In 2022, Karlsruhe judges declared large parts of the surveillance powers laid down therein unconstitutional. This applies, for example, to the powers to monitor living spaces, secret online searches using state trojans, cell phone tracking and the deployment of secret staff. At the same time, the Constitutional Court created new standards for the work of domestic secret services in general. The Bavarian legislature then carried out reforms, but at the same time the court-ordered reform reduced “the already vague requirements for the transfer of information to private individuals”, according to the GFF.
(Mill)
