Federico Marengo’s Post

Legislation in Hesse and Hamburg regarding automated data analysis for the prevention of criminal acts is unconstitutional The German Federal Constitutional Court declared that the provisions in those legislations that authorise the police to process stored personal data through automated data analysis (Hesse) or automated data interpretation(Hamburg) are unconstitutional. They allow linking previously unconnected automated databases and data sources in analysis platforms and permit systematic access of data across sources through searches. They did not pass the proportionality test. 1) The principles of purpose limitation and change in purpose apply - According to these provisions, personal data can be subjected to further processing that is in line with the original purpose as well as processing with a change in purpose. Both provisions allow for the processing of large amounts of data, essentially without differentiation as to the source of the data or the original purpose of its collection 2) Automated data analysis and interpretation amounts to a separate interference. - The further processing of data that has been collected and stored can result in new detrimental effects, which might be more onerous than the severity of interference of the original data collection. 2.1) Automated data analysis or interpretation is directed at generating new intelligence - The authorities can generate far-reaching intelligence from available data through the use of practically all of the existing IT methods and also deduce new connections by way of data analysis. 2.2) The powers in question allow the automated processing of unlimited amounts of data by means of methods that are not circumscribed by law. - They allow the police, with just one click, to create comprehensive profiles of persons, groups and circles.  - They may also subject many persons who are legally innocent to further police measures, if their data was collected in some context and the automated evaluation of this data leads the police to wrongly identify them as suspects.. - They have virtually no restrictions on the type and amount of the data that can be used for data analysis or interpretation.  - They do not set out what types of data and what data records may be used for automated analysis or interpretation. In particular, they  do not differentiate between persons for which there are reasonable grounds to assume that they could commit a criminal act or those that have a particular connection to such persons, and others as to which no such grounds exist. Given the particularly broad wording of the powers, in terms of both the data and the methods concerned, the grounds for interference fall far short of the constitutionally required threshold of an identifiable danger, and thus are unconstitutional #predictivepolicing #dataanalysis H/T Luis Alberto Montezuma and Katerina Alvizou