The Landes Konferenz der Allgemeinen Studierendenausschüsse (LAK) calls for a demonstration against the draft law on the new police law. On 19.09. from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. we demonstrate loudly on the Flaggenplatz at Jungfernstieg (directly opposite Jungfernstieg 7).
Demonstrate together with us against the draft law! Set a sign against the "total surveillance"!
On 19.09.2019, the Interior Committee of the Hamburg Parliament will discuss the "Third Act to Amend Police Regulations".
The law gives rise to a wealth of competences which are conferred here on the state executive, which could probably have originated in the fantasies of George Orwell. Of course, this surveillance in Hamburg should not serve to establish a totalitarian state, but to "ward off dangers" and to prevent and prosecute "crimes of considerable importance". This may not sound so bad to some, perhaps even desirable. Why this police law, however, is quite dangerous and should be a reason for protest for everyone - even righteous citizens - will be explained in the following.
+++ Difficulties of interpretation +++
The whole of this police law was obviously written with the idea of hindering the police in their work as little as possible. This starts with the definitions of terms. A "criminal offence of considerable importance" is, for example, simply any crime (§2 para. 2 sentence 1) as well as a whole series of offences and the "defence against danger" is, for example, the "elimination of a disturbance of public [...] order (§2 para. 3).
This difficulty of interpretation is extended in many places by creating exceptions, in the event that a measure "is necessary to avert an imminent danger" (§11), that "the fulfilment of a certain police task would be hopeless in the event of other actions" (§10 para. 3) or that "third parties are inevitably affected" (e.g. §18 para. 1, §22 para. 1). Furthermore, exceptions are made in the case of "imminent danger" (e.g. §26Abs.1).
This means that much more than the fight against terrorism can probably be used as a reason for applying the competences of this law. Especially if one considers that the law in turn transfers the obligation to control and comply with the restrictions to the respective executors and responsible persons in the police themselves. An external audit is only provided for retrospectively, if this is the case.
+++ The wealth of competencies +++
In addition to the great freedom of interpretation granted to the police for the use of their competences, the abundance of these competences is also worrying. With this draft law, the police are given, among other things, the powers to obtain personal data from non-public sources (§10), to record images and sounds at public events or gatherings (§18), to record license plates automatically (§19), to bug flats (§22), to intervene in and monitor telecommunications and information systems (§23,§24), to oblige telecommunications providers to monitor and enable intervention (§23), to disclose usage data and data for site monitoring (§25), to use foot cuffs for monitoring (§30), to store data for up to 10 years (§35), and to implement systems for automated data analysis (see §23,§24).g. "Predictive Profiling" (§49). The latter in particular have long been the subject of strong criticism.
+++ The expansion of the surveillance state +++
At present, most of us have the good fortune to live in a democratic constitutional state in which we are not afraid of political persecution and the like. Nevertheless, this police law continues a dangerous trend in which the state, on the pretext of combating terrorism, is increasingly legalising means that allow total and complete surveillance in a way that the StaSi would have been pleased to have available. And even in today's world, the use of such a surveillance system is not safe. The protests against surveillance in China are strong, while our governments are hardly installing any less drastic measures.
+++ Abuse +++
Now one can of course assume that the measures made possible by this police law would not be used in the future by the government or large parts of the police to the detriment of the population, but once these systems have been installed and legalized, they will also be abused, whether by third parties or individual policewomen themselves. The fact that this danger is absolutely real can be shown by some very frightening examples from other federal states. In Hessen, for example, during a Helene Fischer concert in Frankfurt, 83 people were questioned about her name. Although it's unlikely she got caught in 83 police controls. Less amusing is the case of a Frankfurt lawyer who received right-wing extremist threatening letters with details of her address and family, which were probably previously queried in a police database. At least as shocking is a case from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Here a police officer wrote to a thirteen-year-old after obtaining her number from the database and made "sexual advances" to her. There were no consequences.
+++ Conclusion +++
Yes, we need an amendment to the police law. However, not in a form like the current proposal of the Hamburg Senate, which effectively enables the police to have a system of total surveillance managed on their own responsibility. We need a law that creates a tighter framework so that real terrorists* can be prosecuted without curtailing the rights of innocent citizens* and without setting clear limits to police arbitrariness. We need a law that curtails the instruments of surveillance rather than extending them to arrive from 1984 in 2019. We need a law that empowers data protection officers and other external audit bodies to proactively and comprehensively prevent and combat the misuse of installed systems.
+++ Sources +++
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/mecklenburg-vorpommern-whatsapp-texte-an-maedchen-keine-anklagen-a-1272391.html
https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/polizei-datenbanken-missbrauch-datenkriminalitaet-abfragen-daten-schutz/
https://www.fr.de/hessen/hessen-beamte-missbrauchen-polizeisystem-infos-ueber-helene-fischer-kommen-zr-12875917.html
https://www.buergerschaft-hh.de/parldok/dokument/67514/drittes_gesetz_zur_aenderung_polizeirechtlicher_vorschriften.pdf
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The meeting will be chaired by Joseph Rüffert
