If AI laws were rushed through parliament and would be overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court in two years, this “would not help”, says Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider. The new Federal Data Protection Commissioner invited people to discuss the role of AI and data analysis in police work. There should be no doubt that the legal requirements will be followed. Planned, legislative action by a prudent and thorough legislator is needed – a subtle signal from the independent commissioner to those responsible in the Bundestag and the federal government.
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Christoph Krehl, former judge at the Federal Court of Justice, describes the problem from the court’s point of view. The possible uses of AI and algorithmic systems in Germany are appropriately severely restricted under constitutional and European law. Judges must be able to decide, understand and explain how the systems work. Krehl says that in order to provide assistance for assistance tasks, use is permissible under certain conditions if the AI system can be explained.
“We are choking on our own success at the moment”
The phenomenon of digitization cannot be overcome only with more resources such as police officers or public prosecutors, said Markus Hartmann, senior public prosecutor at the North Rhine-Westphalia Cybercrime Central and Liaison Office. The ZAC NRW is also responsible for data-intensive processes for the depiction of online abuse. The ultimate opponent of the prosecution is not the complexity of the individual case, said Hartmann. The mass and the contact points are the problem. Better evaluation will provide new leads in further cases. “At the moment we are choking on our success,” said Hartmann. Automation and AI are particularly necessary when examining evidence. But AI can at least provide assistance in highly standardized processes such as shoplifting reports. Hartmann said he was in favor of making the development available as an open source model to ensure verification.
For the well-known lawyer Gul Pinar, there is also a lot to be said about the use of automated methods. Proceedings will take too long and the criminal police will often provide additional evidence in ongoing trials. This will often lead to unnecessarily long pre-trial detention. At the same time, it should be clear that strict rules should apply: “It must be possible for each accused to understand what exactly was done?” For example, he suggested the right to inspect files in software and search parameters.
Police unionist: no telephones, but mandatory license plate numbers
Alexander Poitzsch, deputy federal chairman of the police union (GDP), pointed out how big the gap between wish and reality is among police officials, with the lack of digital options giving criminals indirect protection, starting with the lack of company mobile phones. The police must be able to monitor messengers and search online. The enemy now acts only as a service provider without a direct connection to criminals in the shadowy world of the underground economy. He is also not afraid of lawsuits against the new version of data retention – for example, with IPv6, so many addresses will be available that one has to think of a system comparable to official license plates.
BMI: Anything that is accessible is considered the public internet
Tobias Wiemann, head of the sub-department for legal and policy affairs in the Department of Public Security at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, who is responsible for the BKA law, explained why the greater powers were planned. When it comes to averting a threat, for example in the case of suspected terrorism, there is enormous time pressure. If a suspect is arrested, it takes hours, for example when smartphones are seized: “To date, the data is not compared automatically, but rather transferred manually and questioned individually.” These are often several hundred contacts. Based on police experience, relevant data must be quickly separated from irrelevant data. The Constitutional Court has explicitly recognized automated analyses as legitimate. The changes now planned in the BKA law paragraph 16a will address three areas: international terrorism, the BKA’s security group and central office tasks, where the BKA will act as a service provider for other police authorities – within narrow limits.
The planned biometric comparison with publicly available data from the Internet includes two types of data: sound analysis and image data. But what is publicly available data? “Everything on the Internet, including the darknet, without you having to log in to closed user groups,” Wieman explained. The reason for the new rule is the case of the long-hidden RAF terrorist. Journalists used image search engines on the Internet to find him before prosecutors. Data protection supervisory authorities consider these search engines, which process image data without consent, to be based on illegally collected data.
Federal Data Protection Commissioner Luisa Specht-Riemenschneider called on everyone involved to define as soon as possible which guardrails would be absolutely necessary for automated processes in police work. And warned: “The digital public space is not only the space in which we make data accessible ourselves, but also the space that other people make accessible.” Differentiation is not possible here.
(MKI)
