Manhunts and Data Protection - From Perspective of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection (From Moeglichkeiten und Grenzen der Fahndung Arbeitstagung des Bundeskriminalamtes Wiesbaden, P 57-62, 1980 - See NCJ-78924)

• NCJ Number: 78928
• Author(s): H P Bull
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 6 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Language: German
• Country: West Germany (Former)
• Note: Lecture given at Working Conference of the Federal Bureau of Criminal Matters, Nov. 12-15, 1979.

Annotation

Provisions of West German law governing collection and use of computerized data by the police are reviewed.

Abstract

The law protects against intervention in citizens' rights. Any such intervention, including collection and transmission of data, requires a specific legal basis, especially for search operations which depend on large amounts of data. By law, storage of personal data is permitted when required by the police as part of their responsibility in investigating and assisting in the prosecution of crimes. Data storage must be authorized and necessary for official police functions. What information is necessary varies from case to case and depends on which laws are in danger of violation. As it is more important to protect against imminently dangerous criminals than to solve offenses long since committed, data collection requirements are more stringent for investigative searches than for searches involving dangerous criminals. Requirements also differ for the various levels of police. Only information of national, not regional, relevance may be stored in the Inpol computer system of the Federal criminal investigation office. Laws governing transfer of personal information from other agencies to the police exist for particular types of cases but must still be applied on a case by case basis. No information laws have been established for the Federal Transportation Agency or the Central Register of Foreigners, both of which may provide valuable information to the police. As a result, the planned on-line connections of the Inpol system to those agencies raises questions about the real possibility of checking the relevance of information in individual cases. No such connection should be established without a decision of the Parliament. A number of legal problems still exist with relation to police surveillance, general checks of visitors to incarcerated terrorism suspects, and to evaluation of data for a group of individuals who share characteristics of a known offender sought by police. It is especially important that data for searches be made subject to limited access or erased completely. In the case of large scale 'fishing expeditions' involving large numbers of minor suspects, short terms for evaluation and erasure of the records are recommended. Noncomputerized records on individuals should be destroyed at the same time.